The Ends of Our Tethers Read online

  FOR AGNES OWENS

  One of Our Best

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Big Pockets with Buttoned Flaps

  Swan Burial

  No Bluebeard

  Pillow Talk

  Moral Philosophy Exam

  Job’s Skin Game

  Miss Kincaid’s Autumn

  My Ex Husband

  Sinkings

  Aiblins

  Property

  15 February 2003

  Wellbeing

  End Notes and Critic Fuel

  About the Author

  Copyright

  BIG POCKETS WITH BUTTONED FLAPS

  A MILD SEPTEMBER MORNING. A man no longer young strolls thoughtfully on a narrow footpath along a former railway line. Noises tell of a nearby motorway but brambles, elders and hawthorns on each side hide all but the straight empty path ahead until he sees a small clearing among bushes on his right. Two girls sit here at the foot of an old telegraph pole. He pauses, gazing at the top of the cracked grey timber pole. It has cross-pieces with insulators like small white jam pots from which broken wires dangle. He is aware that the girls are in their teens, look surly and depressed, wear clumsy thick-soled boots and baggy military trousers from which rise pleasantly slim bodies. One says crossly, “What are you staring at?”

  “At the wires of that sad sad pole!” says the man without lowering his eyes. “A few years ago they carried messages from this land of ours to a world-wide commercial empire.” “A few years? It was yonks ago,” says the girl scornfully. Without looking straight at her the man glimpses a stud piercing her lower lip and one through the wing of a nostril. He says, “Yonks. Yes. I suppose telegraphs were defunct before you were born.”

  He continues looking up at it until the other girl stands, stretches her arms, pretends to yawn, says, “I’ll better away,” and walks off through the bushes. Her companion still sits as she did before the stroller arrived.

  A minute later he takes a folded newspaper from his coat pocket, unfolds and lays it on the grass where the departed girl was, then sits down with hands folded on the knee of a bent leg. Looking sideways at the girl (who still pretends to ignore him) he says quietly, “I must ask you a difficult question about … about the eff word. Does it shock or annoy you? I don’t mean when used as a swear word, I detest swearing, I mean when used as a word for the thing … the act lovers do together. Eh?”

  After allowing her a moment to reply he speaks briskly as if they had reached an agreement.

  “Now I fully realise that a lovely young woman like you —” (she sneers) “— don’t sneer, has no wish to eff with a boring old fart like me in bushes beside a derelict railway line. But I suppose you are unemployed and need money?”

  “Fucking right I do!” she cries.

  “Don’t swear. This is an unfair world but I am no hypocrite, I am glad I have money you need. We should therefore discuss how much I am willing to pay for what you are prepared to do. I promise that a wee chat will probably give all the stimulus I need. I have never been greatly enamoured by the down-to-earth, flat-out business of effing.”

  “Ten pounds!” says the girl, suddenly facing him at last. He nods and says, “Not unreasonable.”

  “Ten pounds now! Nothing without cash up front,” she says, holding out a hand. From a wallet within his coat he gives her bank notes.

  “Thanks,” she says, pocketing them and standing up, “Cheerio.”

  He looks up at her wistfully. She says, “You’re too weird for me as well as too old and you’re right. This is an unfair world.”

  She goes off through the bushes. He sighs and sits there, brooding.

  Then hears a rustling of leaves. The other girl has returned and stands watching him. He ignores her until she says, “I didnae really go away. I was listening all the time behind that bush.”

  “Mm.”

  “I don’t think you’re weird. Not dangerous-weird. You’re just funny.”

  “Name?” he asks drearily.

  “Davida.”

  “I thought the Scottish custom of making daughters’ names out of fathers’ names had died out.”

  “It came back. What’s your name?”

  “I’m giving nothing else away today Davida. Don’t expect it.”

  But he is looking at her. She grins cheerily back until he shrugs and pats the grass beside him. She hunkers down slightly further away, hugging her legs with both arms and asking brightly, “What were you going to say to Sharon?”

  “You too want cash from me.”

  “Aye, some, but not as much as Sharon. Forget about money. Say what you like, I won’t mind.”

  He stares at her, opens his mouth, swallows, shuts his eyes very tight and mutters,

  “Bigpocketswithbuttonedflaps.”

  “Eh?”

  “Big,” he explains deliberately. “Pockets. With. Buttoned. Flaps. At last I have said it.”

  “They turn you on?” says Davida, looking at her pockets in a puzzled way.

  “Yes,” he says defiantly, “because violence is sexy! These pockets are military pockets with room for ammunition clips and grenades and iron rations. On women they look excitingly … deliciously … unsuitable.”

  “Yes, I suppose that’s why they’re in fashion but they’re nothing to get excited about.”

  “I enjoy being excited about them,” he groans, covering his face with his hands.

  “Were you a school teacher?”

  “You’ll get nothing more out of me, Davida … Why do you think I was a teacher?”

  “Because you’re bossy as well as polite. Yes, and teachers have to pretend to be better than normal folk so they’re bound to go a bit daft when they retire. What did you want with Sharon’s pockets that was worth ten quid?”

  He looks obstinately away from her.

  “Did you want to stick your hands in them like THIS?” she giggles, putting her hands in her pockets. “Did you want to fumble about in them like THIS?”

  “No more dirty talk!” orders a very tall thin youth emerging from the bushes, “How dare you molest this young lady with your obscene and suggestive insinuations?”

  “ME molest HER? Ha!” cries the man and lies back flat on the grass with hands clasped behind head. He thinks it wise to look as relaxed and unchallenging as possible for he is now greatly outnumbered. Beside the tall youth is a smaller, stouter youth who looks far more menacing because his face is expressionless, his head completely bald, and beside him stands Sharon saying scornfully, “Big pockets with buttoned flaps!”

  “You should have left us alone a bit longer,” grumbles Davida. “He was starting to enjoy himself.”

  “He was starting to enjoy his antisocial fetishistic propensities with a lassie young enough to be his grand-daughter!” cries the tall youth fiercely.

  “Molesting two lassies in fifteen minutes!” says Sharon. “We’ve witnesses to prove it. He’s got to pay us for that.”

  The man says, “I’ve paid you already.”

  “That … is not an attitude … I would advocate if you want to stay in one piece,” says the tall boy slowly taking from a big pocket in his trousers a knife with a long blade. The smaller, more dangerous-looking youth says, “Hullo, Mr McCorquodale.”

  The man sits up to see him better and asks, “How’s the family, Shon?”

  “Dad isnae out yet,” says the shorter boy, “but Sheila’s doing well in TV rentals. She went to Australia.”

  “Yes Sheila was the smartest of you. I advised her to emigrate.”

  “I KNEW he was a teacher,” says Davida smugly.

  “You stupid fucking cretin!” the tall boy yells at the shorter one, “If you’d kept out the way we could have rolled
him for all he’s got, buggered off and nothing would have happened! We don’t live round here, we’ve no police record, nobody could have found us! But now he knows you we’ll have to evade identification by cutting off his head and hands and burying them miles away!”

  He saws the air wildly with the knife. The girls’ faces express disgust. The smaller youth says mildly, “Don’t do that to old Corky, he wasnae one of the worst.”

  “Not one of the worst?” cries the ex-teacher jumping to his feet with surprising agility, “Did I not make my gym a living hell for you and your brothers? I also advise YOU,” he tells the taller youth, “to put that knife away. You obviously don’t know how to handle it.”

  “And you do?” says the tall boy sarcastically.

  “Yes, son, I do. I served five years in the army before I took to teaching. Your combat training is all from television and video games. I have learned armed AND unarmed combat from professional killers paid by the British government. Davida. Sharon. Shon. Persuade your friend to pocket that bread knife. Tell him he’s a fine big fellow but I’m stronger than I look and if he’s really interested in dirty fighting I can show him some tricks that’ll have the eyes popping out of his head. Tell him I gave Sharon nearly all the money I carry so if he needs more he’ll have to come home with me.”

  And McCorquodale smiles rather

  wistfully at the tall youth’s

  combat trousers.

  SWAN BURIAL

  I PHONE OUR ADMINISTRATOR and say that in ten minutes I will bring her the overdue assessments. She says, “Thank you, Doctor Gowry. And will you also bring the introduction to the new handbook?”

  “That will take a little longer, Karen, perhaps another hour.”

  “Then don’t bother bringing me all these things today. Leave the assessed portfolios and introduction in my front-office pigeon hole when you go home tonight. I’ll process them first thing tomorrow.”

  “Thank you Karen, that would be much more convenient.”

  “I’m Phyllis, Doctor Gowry. Karen left three months ago.”

  “Haha, so she did. Sorry, Phyllis.”

  I finish assessing the portfolios on my desk, look for the others and remember I took them home three days ago. Never mind. I’ll rise early tomorrow and bring them to the front office before Karen arrives. So now I tackle the introduction, though I fear this job is getting beyond me and I should apply for something less demanding. Which reminds me that I have applied for another job, with Human Resources, and must soon attend an interview for it. But first, the introduction. This should be easy. I need only bring the introduction to last year’s handbook up to date by changing a word here or there.

  But revising the old introduction turns out to be almost impossible. I wrote it only a year ago but the language now strikes me as long-winded official jargon, misleading when not practically meaningless. It was written to attract folk with money into an organisation I now want to leave, but surely that can be done in a few simple, honest sentences? I try and try to write them and have almost glimpsed how to do it when I see the the time is nearly four P.M! My interview with Human Resources is at four fifteen! If I run to the main road and catch a taxi at once I can still be in time so run.

  Rain is falling, every passing taxi is engaged, at ten past four I decide to phone Human Resources, apologise, blame the weather and if possible postpone the interview. I rush into a familiar pub and find the public telephone has been replaced by a flashing machine that gives the users an illusion of shooting people. I groan. A man I know asks why. I say, “No telephone.”

  “Use my mobile,” he says, holding out what looks like a double nine domino.

  “Thank you – thank you – but I don’t know how to use such a machine.”

  “I’ll dial for you. What number?”

  I cannot tell him, for the number is in a diary on my office desk. He offers to dial directory enquiries but, suddenly full of black certainty that I have now no chance of the Human Resources job, instead I order a large whisky for each of us.

  He says, “Thanks. Cheers. You seem troubled. Tell me your woes.”

  I do so in great detail, during which he buys us each another drink. At last he says, “Remarkable. Remarkable. But why apply to Human Resources? It doesn’t even figure in the Dow Jones index. You’re a metallurgist so you should apply to Domestic Steel. It died in the late sixties but a renaissance is due and your age and experience would make you a valuable link with the past.”

  I ponder these words and find that they also strike me as meaningless official jargon. I order another round of drinks and tell him I mainly regret losing my chance with Human Resources because of my wife. She feels my job with Scottish Arterial is killing me. The man says, “I suspect you need a total change of scene. Any plans for a holiday this year?”

  I say, “Not this year,” and explain that my wife hates leaving home, even for a few days, because she is sure we cannot afford it. She says such suggestions threaten our marriage and make her feel I am battering her. I then notice it is twenty minutes to ten, say goodbye and leave, but as usual nowadays I call for a quick drink at two or three other pubs on my way home.

  I open our front door shortly after midnight and hear gentle snoring from the darkened bedroom. I undress without switching on the light but the window curtains are not completely drawn. By gleams from a street lamp outside I see a tumbler of clear liquid on my wife’s bedside table. Is it water? Gin? Vodka? Does she drink as much alcohol in my absence as I do in hers? I refrain from investigating and slip in beside her. The rhythm of her snores alters slightly as she snuggles cosily against me. I lie basking in that cosiness. This is now the pleasantest part of my life; perhaps it always was. She mutters something that sounds like “I wish she had chosen a different star.”

  “Who are you talking about?” I ask. She is obviously talking in her sleep, but even then can sometimes answer questions. After a moment she mutters that they’re burying the bird.

  “What bird?” I ask, trying to imagine the dream she is having. After a while she says, “A swan.”

  Her dreams are as impenetrable as my own.

  I continue basking in her warmth, dimly haunted by a feeling that tomorrow I should rise early and do something. I cannot remember what, but Karen will know. Karen is amazingly efficient and good at covering up for me; besides, nowadays in Britain no professional person as close to retiral as I am is ever sacked for inefficiency.

  I wait patiently for sleep

  to cover me all up

  like a cloak.

  NO BLUEBEARD

  BEFORE TALKING ABOUT Tilda I’ll mention earlier wives. Wife 1 was an ordinary tidy home-lover. We met at secondary school and after leaving it she let us make love then refused to allow any more of that unless we married. So we married. Wife 2 was a bossy manager, wife 3 very quiet and messy. I married all of them because it made us feel more secure for a while and separated from them without fuss or fighting, so I am obviously no Bluebeard. Indeed, most of my life has passed in sexual loneliness which makes me hopeful when a new affair looks like starting, as happened a year ago.

  In the park near my home I saw a couple stand quarrelling under a tree. No one else was in sight but they were yards away from me and I expected to pass without being noticed. Instead the woman rushed over to me saying, “Please help me, sir, that man is frightening me.”

  “Good riddance!” shouted the man and hurried away leaving us facing each other.

  She was in her late teens or early twenties, big and beautiful in a plain undecorated way, with short brown hair and a determined expression that showed she was no victim. Victims don’t attract me. Her clothes were of very good quality and conventional in a smart country-wear style, yet seemed slightly odd, either because they did not perfectly match or were more suited to an older woman. The silence between us grew embarrassing. I asked if she would like a coffee. She seized my hand saying, “Lead the way,” and I found us walking toward a hotel outsi
de the park gates, gates through which the man who had shouted at us was rapidly vanishing without a backward glance. We walked side by side so easily that I thought she was leading me, though later I found she knew nothing of the neighbourhood. I asked her name. She said, “Mattie or Tilda, take your pick.”

  “Surname?”

  “That,” she said emphatically, “is what they want me not to advertise. The less said about that the better you cunt.”

  Her loud clear voice had the posh accent that strikes most Scottish ears as English. I decided she was an eccentric aristocrat and suddenly, because I am a conventional soul, had no wish to take her to a hotel lounge or anywhere public. I suggested going to my place. She said, “Lead on,” so I did.

  We had not far to go and as we swung along she murmured, “Cunt cunt. Cunt cunt,” very quietly to herself as if hoping no one heard. That excited me. My flat is a large bed-sitting room, workroom, bathroom and kitchen. She stood in the largest room and announced, “This is certainly more salubrious than that other man’s place.”

  As I helped to remove her coat she whispered, “You cunt,” which I took as an invitation to help her out of more garments. She muttered, “Right, carry on.”

  I led her to the bed. What followed was so simple and satisfying that afterwards I lay completely relaxed for the first time in years, almost unable to believe my good luck.

  “And now,” she said, lying flat on her back and talking loudly as if to the ceiling, “I want apple tart with lots and lots of cream on top. Ice cream.”